In an essay written for Harper’s Bazaar, Madonna has opened up about having been raped at knifepoint during her early days in New York City.

The Material Girl guest-wrote the 2,100 word auto-biographical essay for the cover story of the Harper’s Bazaar November issue. In it she discusses, among other personal tales, the transition from Michigan to New York City in the late 1970s, “to become a REAL artist. To be able to express myself in a city of nonconformists.”

‘New York wasn’t everything I thought it would be. It did not welcome me with open arms.’

The article, fittingly titled “Truth or Dare,” provides the pop queen a platform to reveal “the truth about daring.”

“New York wasn’t everything I thought it would be,” Madonna writes in the essay. “It did not welcome me with open arms. The first year, I was held up at gunpoint. Raped on the roof of a building I was dragged up to with a knife in my back, and had my apartment broken into three times.”

This is not the first time Madonna recalled the incident publicly: While promoting her 1995 book Sex, the singer spoke about her rape from her past in an interview with the NME.

“I have been raped and it is not an experience I would ever glamorize,” she said at the time. “It happened a long time ago so over the years I’ve come to terms with it. In a way it was a real eye-opening experience.”